Life in the kitchen is no easy task for Gabriel Lightfoot, the chef at a restaurant in London’s Imperial Hotel. He must appease demands of the hotel manager and handle a staff reflecting Piccadilly’s multiculturalism, all while secretly negotiating with backers to open his own restaurant.

But the death of a night porter brews up trouble in the basement and upsets the balance in Gabriel’s life. When he meets Lena, a mysterious Eastern European with a connection to the porter who says she was trafficked, his offer of shelter turns into an affair, dashing his relationship with his recently proposed-to girlfriend Charlie.